Pathfinder Beginner Box: Session 4

Last weekend we played our fourth session of PFBB. We finished off the a modified version of the free downloadable adventure “Hollows Last Hope”. My players really enjoyed it and starting next session (which should be next saturday) we will continue on to “Crown of the Kobold King”. I'm excited in part because I've been wanting to run this for a while, but also because I really like the whole series of adventures that revolve around the dungeon below the Dwarven monastery and Falcons Hollow.

I made some more changes to the rules. This time it was based on hit points and healing.

First off I've changed the hit dice characters receive. Wizards now get a d6, rogues a d8, clerics a d10, and fighters a d12. Since those are the only classes available in the Beginner Box, I didn’t need to worry about any of the other classes. Every level the characters get max hp plus their Constitution bonus or penalty as the case might be.

Lastly for healing, I handed out three poker chips to each player. They could turn in a chip at any time to heal themselves to full. Of course this turned magical healing on its head. I didn’t have enough time to look into a proper solution for that, so I told the cleric to not worry about healing spells and instead focus on some of the other spells available. I hate that clerics are combat medics, and I'd much rather see them focus on things like demon hunters, or undead slayers, or whatever. In practice it didn’t work out the way I liked. Going forward I think I'm going to adapt the healing surges from the 13^th Age RPG.

While theres a lot I like about Pathfinder, the rules are just too dense at this point for the level of my kids to grasp. I know the two dad's I play with would like to get more gritty with feats and class options, but for now I've just had leave all that behind. No one seems to notice, and everyone seems to have fun. The more we play the more I keep thinking I should just move wholesale into Swords & Wizardry, which is probably a lot closer to what where playing right now anyway.

All in all it's been a nice experience to teach the game to a whole new generation of gamers. I even had one girl who asked her mom if she could skip skiing lessons so she could game, and has been harassing her to buy her dice!          

Pathfinder Beginner Box: Session 3

I managed to finally get another game of the Kids Pathfinder Beginners Box in. Hopefully we should be chucking dice again soon. This time I tried something new. The last few times we played it became obvious to me that there was just information overload for the kids. The character sheets just have too much information scattered all over them. This has the effect of causing the game to grind as everyone searches and guesses at what numbers to add. Hell I even found myself looking over the character sheets trying to figure out where the hell something was. As a veteran of 3e I found this particularity frustrating. In fact I think this was part of the reason it took me so long to want to run the game again. This time however I took a bunch of index cards and wrote on the most relevant information on them. I threw out skills and now use ability checks. The most important information for me was Ability modifiers and excluded the actual ability scores. In addition I included attack and damage rolls, saving throws, AC, HP, XP, and initiative scores. I also told the players they only needed a d20 and what ever damage dice they required. This reduced the amount of time searching for the right dice. I also dumped feats and most class based abilities, since most people forgot they had them anyway. I kept, flanking, sneak attack, and charging

The result was that we had a much better session. I couldn’t believe how many encounters we blew through. The index card character sheet worked great. The only thing I think I would change would be damage dice. There was still a certain amount of “Which one do I use? ” that I found frustrating. I think from now on all weapons will use a d6 for damage and the type of weapon heavy or light, will provide a flat bonus to damage. Same thing with AC. It will be either heavy or light. I'm at the point where I find the billions of modifiers and rules exceptions grate on my nerves. I love the core ideas behind the d20 system, just not the excess of minutia of detail that typically comes with it. Honestly if I played with people who knew the rules and enjoyed crunch I would totally go whole hog, but at this point even the Beginner Box is too much for the level that the kids are at to make the game actually enjoyable to play.       

The new character sheets. Each  of the wizard's spells are on a separate card. 

Pathfinder Beginner Box: Session 2

So we had our second Pathfinder Beginner Box session today! It went a lot better than last time. This week we split the group into two. We now have an all girls group and a all boys group. It will be interesting to see how the two groups approach the game as I plan on running them through the same scenarios. Todays group was the boys, with five players and me GMing. Time was of the essence so I had to burn through the adventure, which I took out of the Game Masters Guide. We played for about an hour an a half. I would have liked to have a little more time but I'll take what I can get. All in all everyone seemed to have a lot of fun. I really enjoyed myself this time. Best of all everyone came with their own set of dice! My buddy picked up a GIANT d20 with skull inside from Montreal Comic Con. It was WAY rad, though as you can see below the picture doesn't really do it justice. I take the buying of dice as a good sign that I'm doing something right. Below you can see some photos I snapped from today. The next session will probably be in a month due to busy schedules and will be with the second group of all girls. I'll tell you one thing, gaming with kids isn't any easier on the scheduling issue that faces us adults. If anything it seems like its worse.  

Pathfinder With Kids

It's been a while on the blog front. Truth be told theres been pretty much nil on the game table in the past many months. Looking to change that situation I decided to start a table top rpg club with my kids and some of their friends.

I agonized for some time about how to go about doing this. In the end I bought the Pathfinder Beginner Box. I have to say that this is a solid product to start beginners off with. The production values are Paizo's typical high standards, and theres enough material plus web extras to provide a solid base before moving on to the core book.

This past afternoon was the big day and while I feel like everyone had fun, I was a victim of my own success.I had two other inexperienced dads helping me out. Along with nine kids ranging from 7 to 10 years old! That was just too many people. I also once again made the mistake of starting off making characters. I should have gone the pregen route. Now that characters are made the next session in two weeks should go better.

After character creation we had a rumble in the town square of Sandpoint with a band of goblins who decided to crash the annual festival. Everyone had fun bringing the smack down on the goblins. It was during actual play that everyone started to gel with what roleplaying was all about. Or at least the possibilities of adventures to come. It's occurred to me that roleplaying is kinda like the Matrix. No one can tell you what it is, you need to experience it for yourself. As for the future of the game I've been giving some serious thought to maybe breaking the group up into two groups that alternate every week. But I guess I'll see how many kids decide to show up at the next session.

Till then Im just happy to be rolling the dice again, and introducing a new generation to our amazing hobby.